Monday, December 31, 2007

Repast (Meshi). 1951. Directed and edited by Mikio Naruse. Written by Toshiro Ide and Sumie Tanaka, based on the novel by Fumiko Hayashi. Scenario supervised by Yasunari Kawabata. Produced by Sanezumi Fujimoto. Cinematography by Masao Tamai. Music by Fumio Hayasaka. Art direction by Satoshi Chuko. Sound by Masao Fujiyoshi.

Repast, Mikio Naruse’s first adaptation of the work of celebrated Japanese novelist Fumiko Hayashi, is one of his very finest films, a deceptively simple examination of a troubled marriage, told with the penetrating insight and elegant images that made Naruse such an extraordinary artist. It features one of the greatest performances by the luminous Setsuko Hara, who was a master of gesture and glances which reveal her character without any dialogue needing to be spoken. Her line readings and inflections, sighs, and exclamations all draw us in and make us sympathize with this often opaque, mysterious and forbidding character. At the outset, Michiyo (Hara) is growing bored and frustrated with what she sees as her endlessly monotonous existence, cooking, cleaning, and looking after her husband, Hatsunosuke (Ken Uehara). She seems to reserve most of her affection for her cat, Yuri. However, the couple seems to have reached a state of equilibrium in this situation, in which they have managed to submerge their mutual unhappiness beneath banal pleasantries.

This delicate balance is upset by the arrival of Hatsunosuke’s niece Satoko (Yukiko Shimazaki), a flighty young woman who comes to their house for a refuge from her father and her impending marriage. To Michiyo’s dismay and growing anger, Hatsunosuke begins to lavish attention on his pretty and flirtatious niece, going with her on a bus tour of Osaka (which includes one of the film’s loveliest moments, when the cheerful tour guide suddenly breaks out into song), and seeking his own refuge from his unexciting home and office life. These and other events drive Michiyo to the breaking point, until she finally leaves home and stays at her parents’ house in Tokyo and even considers staying there to find a job.

Like most of Naruse’s films, most of the characters are unhappy, and this is their default mode. But as the final sublime moments prove, it is possible to find small moments of grace and greater meaning within this existence. As such, for me personally, this is a great film with which to end the year. Although as meticulous and precise in its own way as that other great master of Japanese cinema, Ozu, Naruse’s style is nearly invisible and quite naked, all the more for us to feel intensely for these characters and their struggles, even though it may on the surface seem quite artless and mundane. And as presented in a beautiful transfer from Masters of Cinema, which includes a nicely written booklet with articles by Audie Bock, Catherine Russell, and Phillip Lopate, and insightful audio commentary by Lopate and Kent Jones, Repast never ceases to amaze with its nearly effortless sublimity, representing the art of cinema at its finest.

Repast is included in a box set which includes two of Naruse’s other 50's films, Sound of the Mountain (1954) and Flowing (1956). Taken together, they are an excellent introduction to one of cinema’s greatest artists.

Masters of Cinema's Naruse box set can be purchased from Amazon.co.uk.

Saturday, December 29, 2007

Whispers and Moans (Singkungtsoktse supyat tam). 2007. Directed by Herman Yau. Written by Yeeshan Yang and Herman Yau, based on the book by Yeeshan Yang. Produced by Ng Kin Hung. Cinematography by Puccini Yu. Edited by Yau Chi Wai. Music by Brother Hung. Art direction by Raymond Kwok.

Despite its rather misleading title, Herman Yau’s film is no soft-core, exploitative extravaganza, but rather an un-romanticized depiction of the lives of several prostitutes who work out of a hostess club. The film’s sense of realism is due in large part to its source material, as it is based on Yeeshan Yang’s book of interviews with real-life sex workers. The business is constantly threatened by most of the other clubs moving to Shenzhen, China, and Mainland Chinese girls flooding the sex-trade market, leaving everyone in a financially and emotionally precarious state. Visual depictions of the sex act are almost completely elided in this film, to highlight the fact that everything is strictly business. One of the girls, who calls herself Happy (Misia Chan), prides herself on remaining clean and professional, and when that is compromised by one of her colleagues, she launches into an angry rant about all of the sacrifices she has put herself through for her profession.

Much of the material here is quite familiar from other films depicting the sex trade. In fact, there are some interesting comparisons to be made with another film, Abel Ferrara’s Go Go Tales. However, while that film depicted a bright fantasy world filmed on a soundstage, Yau’s film strives for greater verisimilitude. Although there are many elements that could be easily played for melodrama – Nana (Mandy Chiang) hides her work from her boyfriend, Aida (Monie Tung) is a raging heroin addict who is soon reduced to plying her trade on the streets, Madame Coco (Athena Chu) is embroiled in successive romantic entanglements with different men – at every point this is undercut with a sense of world-weariness imparted by these women who have seen everything, and have gained experience well beyond their years.

Money is the lifeblood of this scenario, and the subject around which everything in this film revolves. Everyone needs it, tries to save it, loses it, gives it away, and everything is negotiable. The threat of disease hangs over it all, and the anxious time while waiting for the test results for syphilis or AIDS is the most agonizing occupational hazard. One man infected with syphilis causes extreme anxiety for two of his sex partners: Madame Coco, who at one point pulls her daughter out of daycare to get tested, afraid that she may have infected the girl with her tears; and Joey (Dan Li), his transsexual consort.

The large cast is quite good, and their conflicts are deftly woven into the fabric of this vibrant world. There is an admirable lack of moral judgment and exploitation, and everyone is sympathetic in their own way. Even Elise (Yan Ng), the social activist attempting to organize the girls into a union in order to defend their rights and fight the societal stigmatization and law enforcement harassment that they must endure, and who could easily be held up for ridicule because of her do-gooder naïveté, is treated with as much dignity and respect for her views as any of the other characters. In all, this is a remarkably mature and subtly observed work from a director who has made some of the most extreme and outré films in Hong Kong cinema, such as The Untold Story (a serial killer cooks his victims into pork buns) and Ebola Syndrome (self-explanatory). Be forewarned: viewers in search of cheap titillation will have to look elsewhere, as there isn’t a single sex scene in this film. But those who can get over their disappointment at the lack of naked flesh will find an intelligent and perceptive work. Even though the film’s aggressively materialist approach to its subject, as well as the lengthy speeches given by some of the characters, sometimes threatens to tip over into didacticism, Whispers and Moans nevertheless impresses with its bracing humanism and its freewheeling, Altmanesque style.

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Ad-Lib Night (Aju teukbyeolhan sonnim). 2006. Written and directed by Lee Yoon-ki, based on a short story by Azuko Taira. Produced by Lee Yoon-ki and Yun Il-jung. Cinematography by Choi Sang-ho. Edited by Kim Hyeong-ju. Music by Kim Jeong-beom. Art direction by Kim Seong-dal. Costume design by Jeon Hong-ju. Sound by Steve R. Seo.

Lee Yoon-ki’s third feature Ad-Lib Night, based on a short story by Japanese author Azuko Taira, is an intimate and beautifully observed drama which takes place, as per the title, mostly over the course of a single night. Within this compressed time frame, Lee’s searching and perceptive camera-eye shows us a world of pain, humor, and revelation, delivered with the finely honed attention to detail and human psychology he was so adept at in his first feature, This Charming Girl (2004), and in his second, the underrated Love Talk (2005). His latest film, like his debut, has a woman (Han Hyo-ju) at its center, whose true identity isn’t revealed until a startling and poignant scene near the conclusion. She is accosted while on her way to meet someone by two men who mistake her for Myeong-eun, the long-estranged daughter of a dying man. After a protracted, and nicely staged, scene in which after much argument back and forth they slowly realize that she is not who they thought she was, they convince her to pose as this long-lost daughter in order to fulfill the dying man’s wish to see his daughter one last time. They travel far from Seoul to their small town, where the other members of the family are keeping a night-long vigil, since he is so near death.

The set-up is quite simple, but this works all the more to highlight this film’s considerable virtues. Ad-Lib Night is shot almost entirely handheld, with the camera often very close to the actors, and both the family conflicts and the provincial nature of the small town are laid bare over the course of this long night. The scenes of the family arranged in a circle, first debating over whether to go through with the plan to deceive the dying man, and later fighting amongst themselves over long-simmering internal grievances, are vividly rendered by the excellent ensemble cast. In these scenes, the missing daughter looms even larger by her absence. And as we do with many of the characters, aspects that are revealed about them force us to cast aside our initial judgments of them. Myeong-eun, who at first seems to be “unfilial daughter,” as one family member puts it, becomes a more sympathetic figure as we get to know more about the family she left behind. “Now I see why she went away,” one of the young men observes late in the film, as he talks to Myeong-eun’s stand-in.

This film, as much as anything else, is about acting, or more precisely, performance, in both art and life. Interestingly, both the Korean title, which translates as “A Very Special Guest,” and the English title contain references to the performing arts. The young woman is indeed a “special guest” actor in the intense family drama she witnesses, and she must “ad-lib” her way through this night. She rehearses her one line – “Father, I’m sorry” – repeatedly on the long drive to the family home. In one funny scene, after one of the men criticizes the young woman for not being convincing enough, the other retorts, “We’re not shooting a film.”

The young woman, whose role is supposedly so essential, is quickly shunted to the side and is kept peripheral to the family’s squabbling. She spends most of her time in Myeong-eun’s room, searching through her possessions and trying to get some sense of who this lost daughter was. She remains a silent enigma throughout the film, raising many questions, not the least of which is why she allows herself to be brought along on this unusual trip.

“Everybody has their reasons,” Jean Renoir famously stated in Rules of the Game. This film is a wonderful expression of that statement, proving that films need not be sensational and action-packed to be engrossing and suspenseful. Even the smallest gesture, like the young woman exchanging her own socks for the lost daughter’s socks, speaks volumes about character and irresistibly draws us in. Poetic and beautifully crafted, Ad-Lib Night is one of the very best of recent Korean films.

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Paul Thomas Anderson's masterful new film There Will Be Bloodopens on December 26, and has already been topping numerous year-end critics' lists. Based on Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel Oil!, the film is simultaneously epic and intimate, and a terrifying vision of the greed and violence that are the primal underpinnings of American history. Besides the prodigious command of sound and image present in nearly every frame -- from the bravura opening sequence that is as great an example of pure cinema as I've seen in recent memory, to the final astonishing sequence that fulfills the promise of the film's title -- the film makes frequent and canny use of perhaps its greatest asset, the volcanic performance of Daniel Day-Lewis, brilliantly essaying a role that most nearly recalls his only slightly more evil character in Scorsese's Gangs of New York.

Much like Walt Whitman's famous description of himself in "Song of Myself," There Will Be Blood is indeed large, and contains multitudes. I saw the film two weeks ago, and am still struggling to wrap my head around it. So until I can put together a proper review, I've posted below some video highlights of Paul Thomas Anderson and Daniel Day-Lewis discussing the film. Appearing with them are moderator David Schwartz of the Museum of the Moving Image, which hosted the screening, and actor Kevin O'Connor.

In this clip, Anderson discusses the influence of John Huston's Treasure of the Sierra Madreon his film, and Day-Lewis explains how clothing can reveal character:

In this next clip, Day-Lewis discusses the relationship between his character Daniel Plainview and his adopted son:

In this last clip, Anderson and Day-Lewis talk about their working relationship while making the film:

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Woman on the Beach (Haebyonui yoin). 2006. Written and directed by Hong Sang-soo. Produced by Oh Jung-wan. Cinematography by Kim Hyung-ku. Edited by Ham Sung-won. Music by Jeong Yong-jin. Sound by Lee Seung-chul.

One of the very best films of 2006, Hong Sang-soo's sublime Woman on the Beachwill finally receive a U.S. release on January 9, when it begins a two-week run at Film Forum. Below are notes I wrote for my presentation of this film at Korean Cultural Service.

Successful film director Joong-rae is struggling to come up with a scenario for his latest film. Feeling blocked and needing a quiet place to write, he travels from Seoul to Shinduri Beach, a resort on Korea’s west coast. He asks his art director Chang-wook to keep him company. Chang-wook brings along his girlfriend Moon-sook, a music composer who is a fan of Joong-rae’s films. The three spend most of the day wandering around the nearly deserted beach talking, eating, and drinking. As the day unfolds and everyone becomes increasingly inebriated, they reveal significant facets of their personalities and personal histories. As Moon-sook observes, Joong-rae turns out to be very different from his philosophical art films. He is a cynical, abrasive man with a barely concealed rage that erupts with little warning. Nevertheless, Moon-sook and Joong-rae experience a mutual attraction that they act upon when they sneak away from Chang-wook to spend the night together. The next day, however, Joong-rae coldly rebuffs Moon-sook and returns to Seoul. Two days later, a regretful Joong-rae returns to Shinduri hoping to reconnect with Moon-sook. He then meets Sun-hee, a café manager. On the pretext of interviewing Sun-hee for his film, he begins a fling with this new woman whom he is convinced resembles Moon-sook. Complications ensue when Moon-sook herself returns to the beach that night.

Woman on the Beach, Hong Sang-soo’s seventh feature, is his funniest and most accessible film to date. Just as in his other films, male selfishness, egotism and cruelty are put mercilessly on display. However, in this new film Hong gives his material a much lighter touch than usual, with a playful approach to cinematic form. Hong is unique among Korean filmmakers for eschewing flashy visuals and outré subject matter in order to foreground his witty dialogue and the naturalistic performances of his actors. Hong’s deceptively simple style makes use of recurring narrative patterns, which richly rewards multiple viewings. His perceptive and brutally honest depictions of male and female relationships have drawn comparisons to Eric Rohmer. Woman on the Beach features excellent performances, most notably Ko Hyun-joung, a popular TV drama actress making her film debut. Her portrayal of Moon-sook, a woman who remains optimistic despite being emotionally bruised by the men in her life, is a revelation.

Hong Sang-soo was born in 1960 in Seoul. After studying film at Chungang University in Korea, he continued his education in the U.S., earning an MFA degree from the Art Institute of Chicago. Hong also studied for a time at the Cinemathèque Française in Paris. Upon his return to Korea he worked at the SBS television network. In 1996 Hong released his debut film The Day a Pig Fell in the Well, which received much critical acclaim and immediately established him as a major talent. Hong’s films have won numerous awards at film festivals around the world, and have been critically lauded at the Cannes, Berlin, and New York film festivals. His other films are The Power of Kangwon Province (1998), Virgin Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors (2000), Turning Gate (2002), Woman is the Future of Man (2004), and Tale of Cinema (2005).

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Portrait of Youth (Jeolmeun nalui chosang). 1991. Directed by Kwak Ji-kyun. Written by Jang Hyeon-su, based on the novel by Lee Mun-yeol. Produced by Lee Tae-won. Cinematography by Jung Il-sung. Edited by Kim Hyeon. Music by Kim Young-dong. Art direction by Cho Young-sam. Sound by Kim Kyeong-il and Yang Dae-ho.

This film is about one man’s long journey, often across snowy roads and sometimes near death, to enlightenment and self-awareness. However, the English title Portrait of Youth points to what this film truly is, which is a larger portrait of a turbulent period and the responses of young people towards it. Young-hoon (Jong Bo-seok), the protagonist, at the film’s outset has returned to his family home, and to his brother, who is disappointed with him for dropping out of high school. He gives Young-hoon his share of their deceased mother’s inheritance, and sends him on his way, as Young-hoon promises to pass his college entrance examination. “You are the hope of our family,” his brother tells him. No pressure there. Young-hoon goes through the grueling process of working menial jobs to put himself through school. He chooses to major in Korean literature, and aspires to be a poet. However, his lofty ideals run afoul with the tenor of life on campus, which is roiled with conflict, due to the massive student protests going on at the time. In one scene, he is taken to task by the leader of the student movement for writing an article in the school newspaper criticizing activists for denigrating literature in favor of rigidly doctrinaire ideology. His girlfriend Hae-yeon (Ok So-ri) is a French literature major, and their relationship is going well at first, but Young-hoon’s internal confusion soon wrecks things, as he begins to see everything in terms of class conflict as much as the student activists do, criticizing Hae-yeon and her friends for failing to be more conscious of the plight of the lower classes.

Young-hoon’s confusion and despair grows as he witnesses the deaths of two of his friends as a direct result of the protests, and the authorities’ predictably repressive response to them. The campus is shut down, and Yong-hoon takes to the road, carrying a bottle of poison in his pocket. All throughout the film, Yong-hoon is haunted by the memories of his unrequited first love Jung-nim (Lee Hye-sook), dreaming of her often. Yong-hoon arrives at a village, where he works in a brothel, and is drawn to one of the prostitutes, Miss Yoon (Bae Jong-ok). He also meets a mysterious knife-sharpener. Both of them have tragic and complicated pasts, which are revealed as circumstances compel all three to become traveling companions on the harsh, snowy roads.

The film is beautifully shot, with careful attention paid to natural surroundings – lush cherry blossom groves, snowy mountains, rocky and rugged terrain – and how they mirror the psychological states of the many characters we are introduced to in this film, which is essentially a road movie, a very common narrative mode in Korean cinema. The clear and powerful message this movie sends is that life is always worth living, despite tragedy, despite “chaos and confusion,” as Young-hoon describes events in his running voiceover. The core of the human spirit is to carry on in spite of everything, and, as Young-hoon learns, it is not necessary to have all of life’s answers to survive.

Not to be confused with the recent Edith Piaf biopic of the same name, this particular film with the French title La Vie en Rose is a Korean film set in 1987, when the country was gearing up for next year’s Seoul Olympics, and the repressive regime of Chun Doo Hwan had to at least make a show of respecting democratic rights. And as this film powerfully argues, it was indeed very much a show, as student protestors continued to be tear-gassed, and anti-government activists were still forced to lay low and hide out from the authorities. On the evidence of this film, one apparently common place to hide out was the sort of comic book rental shop run in this film by the Madam (Choi Myung-gil), where the almost exclusively male clientele stay overnight, paying an extra fee for the privilege (and for the Madam to risk being shut down by the police), and enjoying after-hours porn flicks. The Madam is dissatisfied with the life she leads, and feels trapped in this existence, but can see no alternative. A friend helpfully sets her up with a businessman for a marriage meeting, to no avail.

Soon, however, three men come into her life, and turn her life and her business (in one scene late in the film, literally) upside down. One of them is her half-brother Jee-ho (Cha Kwang-su), a labor activist wanted by the government and hiding out under an assumed name. The second is Dong-pal (Choi Jae-sung), a gangster wanted by both the police and a rival gang who believes he killed their boss. He beats up other patrons in the shop, and rapes the Madam one day when they are alone in the shop. However, the Madam is so beaten down by her life that she passively accepts this rape, feeling as powerless in stopping it as in leaving the town to live a better life. The third man is Yu-jin (Lee Ji-hyung), a shy, sensitive poet who is also a fugitive from government authorities, having written a satirical anti-government novel, that while being very popular with the public, raised considerable ire in official circles. Yu-jin pines for Miss Oh (Hwang Mi-sun), a pretty coffee-shop delivery girl, whom he comes to learn is not all she seems.

La Vie en Rose was the debut film of Kim Hong-joon, who went on to be a celebrated professor and film scholar, as well as a member of the Korean Film Commission, and the founder of the Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival (PiFan). Kim has made only two subsequent features to date: the rock-music film Jungle Story (1996) and the documentary My Korean Cinema (2003). Kim’s film is an absorbing work that gives us a vivid picture of life during this period of Korean history. The news reports Jee-ho obsessively watches (as the other patrons ignore them, or call for changing the channel), form a background running commentary courtesy of the government propaganda that contrasts sharply with life on the ground. Comic-book culture is very wittily referenced in this film, for example with the scenes of Dong-pal fighting his gangster foes, which could easily have been scenes from the popular martial arts comics the Madam rents out. In a nice little scene, the Madam is taking inventory of her comics, and stops to read one of them, a smile playing across her face, as it obviously has been some time since she has actually sat down to enjoy reading the comics that surround her all day.

At the film’s conclusion, the Madam is resigned to her fate of never leaving her little shop in Seoul, and the run-down neighborhood that surrounds it. However, she takes some comfort in her solidarity with the downtrodden people she serves, offering them shelter and a brief respite from the harsh world outside. The Madam wanted so much to leave this place, with “the shabby houses, and those who barely live.” But, she says, “Now I’ve realized that I’m one of them.” She can help people forget their worries, ply them with food and liquor, and titillate them with erotic comics and porno flicks. She can assure herself that politically and morally, she is ultimately on the right side. And after the despair and tragedy that we have seen over the course of this film, Kim leaves us with a glimmer of hope in the film’s very last shot, an optimistic note that points toward the time that the film was made, under a truly democratic government, the country beginning to recover from a turbulent time that wasn’t so far in the past.

Friday, December 14, 2007

Like a Shooting Star (Kurenai no nagareboshi). 1967. Directed by Toshio Masuda. Written by Kaneo Ikegami and Toshio Masuda. Cinematography by Kurataro Takamura. Music by Hajime Kaburagi. Art direction by Takeo Kimura.

Japan Society’s film series “No Borders, No Limits: 1960’s Nikkatsu Action Cinema” continues with a rare screening of Toshio Masuda’s 1967 film Like a Shooting Star, tonight at 7:30. The title of this film aptly describes its main character, Goro (Tetsuya Watari), a cooler-than-thou gangster, who burns brightly and is gone just as fast. “If I don’t kill you, someone else will,” Goro is told at one point. At the film’s outset, he is sent to maim a rival gang boss and ends up killing the man. He is hidden away by his yakuza family in the port city of Kobe, and told he will be sent for in six months, which stretches to a year. He is bored with the slow pace of Kobe, and listlessly hangs around, occasionally beating up unruly drunken U.S. soldiers on leave from Vietnam at the bar he runs. Goro passively endures a casual romance with his girlfriend Yukari, who constantly begs him to tell her he loves her. He mouths the words, but with little feeling.

Soon enough, however, he gets the excitement he craves. Unbeknownst to Goro, someone is shadowing him. Also, a jewelry trader, Kojima, arrives in town, and soon after disappears. Meanwhile, Usu, a Tokyo detective who has been on Goro’s tail for a long time, waiting for him to slip up so he can throw handcuffs on him, pops up every now and again to taunt him. After Kojima’s disappearance, his fiancé Keiko (Ruriko Asaoka) shows up, and Goro is instantly smitten. He takes her around, knowing full well Kojima has been killed, but pretending to ask around to learn his whereabouts. He bluntly voices to Keiko his desire to sleep with her, and Keiko resists. Nevertheless, they are drawn to each other, and Goro begins to reveal a deeper side that he has heretofore resolutely kept hidden, beneath the veneer of the whistling, icy, detached yakuza. However, he fails to see that his destined end is about to reach him.

Like a Shooting Star is very much a rewrite of Godard’s Breathless, even down to the betrayal at the film’s conclusion. It was a remake of director Toshio Masuda’s 1958 film Red Quay, which itself was inspired by another classic French gangster film, Pépé le Moko. In this film, Keiko extols the virtues of Paris to Goro, who strenuously refutes her romantic notions. Masuda relies less on action scenes than the snappy repartee of its leads, as both the haughty rich girl and the self-consciously cool gangster trade barbs that at first disguise the passion they begin to feel for each other. The film boasts highly stylized cinematography by Kuratoro Takamura, and the production design is just as striking, courtesy of Takeo Kimura, who also designed the distinctive sets of Seijun Suzuki’s films. Lead actor Watari also starred in one of Suzuki’s most famous films, Tokyo Drifter (1966). Like a Shooting Star also features a notable appearance by Jo Shishido, one of Nikkatsu’s biggest stars, as the hitman pursuing Goro.

Saturday, December 8, 2007

Kazoku Cinema (Kajok shinema). 1998. Produced and directed by Park Chul-soo. Written by Woo Byeong-kil, based on the novel by Miri Yu. Cinematography by Lee Eun-kil. Edited by Park Kok-ji. Music by Byung Sung-ryong. Sound by Lee Tae-kyu.

A typically odd film from Park Chul-soo, one of Korea’s most original filmmakers, Kazoku Cinema satirically takes on the idea of artifice and “reality” being one and the same. The film starts off with Yoko (Ichio Matsuda), a porn actress who is dissatisfied with her work (and constantly criticized for her unnatural acting), and wants to do something more respectable. She hits upon the idea of making a documentary/fiction hybrid starring her family. She enlists Katayama (Kim Su-jin), an ambitious director, to take on the task of filming her family. Yoko engineers a family reunion, bringing the camera crew along. Yoko prides herself on having a “unique” family, and the characters we meet bear this out. The most reluctant is Motomi (Eri Yu), Yoko’s older sister, an advertising executive who thought she had successfully left her family and past behind. Her brother Kazuki (Shinobu Nakajima) is a taciturn, virginal misfit, whom their mother Kiyoko (Hiroko Isayama) likens to “keeping an expensive pet.” Kiyoko is a real estate broker who has long been divorced from their father Soji Hayashi (Yang Seok-il), a pachinko parlor manager. With the intrusive presence of the film crew, the family reveals their secrets and idiosyncrasies over the course of the film shoot, trying to stick to the script (and endure the ministrations of the over-eager script girl, who takes every opportunity to shoot rolls of still shots), but not succeeding very well. Katayama enthusiastically encourages all the deviations, sometimes filming the family surreptitiously, at times when they are unaware that the camera is rolling.

Katayama tells the family that his conception of this reunion is “like a festival,” but the family’s tortured history puts an end to that notion very quickly. In a brief flashback scene, we are shown the major conflict between the parents: Soji’s constant money problems, failure to provide for his children, and his violent nature. This forces Kiyoko to work as a cabaret hostess to supplement the family income, and leads to her eventually leaving Soji. Soji, in turn, resents his wife for doing this, calling her a whore, and in one scene, while Kiyoko is in the bathroom, he gathers his children around him and relates on camera how he once caught their mother with another man in their house. He also says that Kiyoko often slept with other men.

One very interesting detail about the family, only briefly alluded to, is that this is an ethnic Korean family, even though at first they seem like typical Japanese. In a telling scene, the script girl asks Katayama if they should mention that this family is Korean, and the director discourages it. Given the tortured history of Japan and Korea, there seems to be some subtext to this turmoil-filled family that relates to their ethnic background, which is all the more intriguing for mostly being left unspoken.

Based on an autobiographical novel by Korean-Japanese author Miri Yu, Kazoku Cinema was a Korean-Japanese co-production, gaining distinction for being the first Korean film shot in Japan with Japanese actors. The film anticipates the explosion of “reality” television, and shows why that word should most definitely be in quotes. As much as the family manipulates, and is manipulated by, the camera recording them, Park manipulates the viewer as well, always causing us to wonder whether the family is showing their true emotions or acting for the camera. The film ends with the most startling fake-out of all, after which the mother looks directly into the camera. “Shameful!” she says accusingly, and she could as easily be addressing the audience as well as her director.

From his breakthrough film 301, 302 to his most recent film Green Chair, Park Chul-soo excels in offering us decidedly odd characters that we nevertheless end up caring for. There is always the sense that even with the outlandish behavior they often exhibit (including, in this film, a bizarre subplot involving an artist who indulges a butt fetish), in the end they are not all that different from “normal” people, and in fact are more honest about their true natures than most. This lends Kazoku Cinema, as well as Park’s other films, a generous vision of, and ultimately a love for, humanity, with all its messiness and idiosyncrasies.

Friday, December 7, 2007

Before We Fall In Love Again (Nian ni ru xi). 2006. Written and directed by James Lee. Produced by Tan Chui Mui and Lorna Tee. Executive produced by Amir Muhammad, Nyu Ka Jin, Ho Yuhang, and Yasmin Ahmad. Cinematography by Teoh Gay Hian. Edited by Jimmy L. Ishmael. Art direction by Eleanor Low. Music by Ronnie Khoo.

The title of this film from Malaysian filmmaker James Lee could easily serve as that of a grand romantic epic, or perhaps one of the Korean television dramas extolled in one scene by a travel agent as a reason for the popularity of Korea travel packages. At once melancholic and hilarious, devastatingly precise and dreamily surreal, Before We Fall In Love Again is an exhilaratingly inventive confirmation of this director’s talents, and by extension, the extraordinary fecundity of talent in current Malaysian cinema. (The producer credits are a virtual roll call of the Malaysian new wave: Amir Muhammad, Yasmin Ahmad, Tan Chui Mui, Ho Yuhang.) The film seems to reinvent itself with each scene, indeed, almost with each shot, as layers of the characters’ histories are peeled away in a continually surprising fashion.

The film’s premise is familiar enough to be almost cliché. Chang (Chye Chee Keong), a seemingly colorless office drone, depressed over the disappearance of his wife Ling Yue (Amy Len) one month earlier, is told by his boss to take a vacation, his moping around apparently trying the patience of his coworkers. “It would be best for all of us,” Chang’s boss says. He goes to a travel agency, greeted by cheerful staff with plastic smiles, who are introduced to us with a priceless sight gag in which the travel agents stand in perfect harmony with cardboard cutouts. This begins a very funny running motif involving service workers’ interactions with the film’s characters. Chang insists on going to Prague (the significance of this locale is revealed later), despite being told that there is a dangerous civil war occurring there. Afterward, he runs into a stranger, Tong (Pete Teo), who is also looking for Ling Yue. Chang invites him to his apartment for coffee (“Would you like some coffee?” is invariably his initial query to people he invites to his home), and finds out that his missing wife had been having a long-term affair with Tong, who had known Ling Yue before she met Chang. For most of the film they sit across from each other drinking coffee, relating their experiences with this woman, who we see in flashback scenes with both men.

And it is these flashbacks that are the heart of the movie, and Lee is so deft at weaving them into the present story that it is stunning to watch. Lee often cuts directly to a flashback scene as a character walks into another room, a beautiful expression of how this missing woman haunts both men and how she is now even more present by her absence. And it is Ling Yue, this impenetrable enigma, who is the true center of this story. Ling Yue is always impossible to read, flitting back and forth between the two men effortlessly. They can have her body and her affection temporarily, but there is an inner essence to her that will forever remain unreachable. She is not the sort of conventional stunning beauty who would normally be the center of such an intense focus; in fact she is rather plain looking. But her mysterious nature gives her an allure and attractiveness that is magnetizing for both men. She serves as a tabula rasa upon which Chang and Tong can inscribe their fantasies and hopes; in one scene, Ling Yue and Chang are in a car, and as they look into each other’s eyes, they both say to each other, “I see myself.” Ling Yue in one scene casually tells Tong that she is going out on a date with another man, and when Tong protests, says in the most deadpan tone, “But I still love you.” Just as casually, Ling Yue reconnects with Tong shortly after she marries Chang. In each interaction with her men, there is always a sense that Ling Yue is not quite there, and has already begun disappearing even before she is gone. At a certain point in the film, one wonders if we can believe anything we see. Is this woman even real? Or is she a mutual hallucination, a nonexistent creature similar to the main female character (also played by Amy Len) in an earlier film by Lee, The Beautiful Washing Machine? In fact, there is a direct reference to that film in a brief scene in which Chang and Ling Yue shop for a washing machine after they marry. Buttressing the idea of this ambiguity about Ling Yue’s existence is the surprising lack of rancor between the two men. Even after learning that his wife had been cheating on him almost throughout their entire relationship, Chang retains a disturbing equanimity.

Lee’s film, shot on black-and-white digital video, is beautifully composed and his style is surprisingly fluid, for a film which mostly consists of soulless, anonymous spaces – hotel rooms, offices, featureless cafes – with very little musical accompaniment. These environments perfectly mirror his two male characters, rather nondescript men, whose only distinguishing traits are their memories of their mutual missing lover. Lee imbues his scenario with a marvelous deadpan humor that reminded me of Jim Jarmusch. Even minor characters – a hotel manager who presents Tong with a bottle of wine for being a “regular customer,” an apologetic Japanese gangster, a woman hiding out from her angry boyfriend – leave a great impression, conjuring an absurdist universe. The film’s visual scheme dramatically changes late in the film, and when this happens, it is quite a startling moment. Adding to the richness of the film is Lee’s willingness to leave very significant details ambiguous, obscure, and unrevealed, lending the film intriguing layers of meaning, making it an open-ended work that rewards multiple viewings. Before We Fall In Love Again is the first installment of Lee’s “Love Trilogy,” exploring themes of unfaithfulness in relationships, inspired by Harold Pinter’s Betrayal. The film won Best Asean Feature at this year’s Bangkok International Film Festival. The second film of the trilogy, Things We Do When We Fall in Love, screened this year at the Singapore International Film Festival, the Deauville Asian Film Festival, and the Hong Kong International Film Festival.

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Below is a video clip and quotes from the New York Film Festival press conference for Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which opened this past Friday. Moderating was Richard Pena from the Film Scociety of Lincoln Center, who was also on this year's selection committee.

In this clip, Schnabel discusses his strategy for directing Mathieu Amalric, who potrays Jean-Dominique Bauby, the subject of the film and the author of the memoir on which the film is based. Well, sort of. You'll see what I mean when you watch:

As you can see, Schnabel loves to talk about himself as much as his film, and while this may come across as self-aggrandizing and offputting, and perhaps justifiably so, this is entirely in keeping with all three of his features, which are artist portraits that are as much about himself as their subjects.

Below are quotes from Schnabel on the film, plucked from the sea of his rambling personal anecdotes and digressions. "Did that answer your question?" was a constant refrain as Schnabel got continually sidetracked in his responses.

"Fred Hughes, who used to work for Andy Warhol, had MS, and when Andy died, he got progressively worse, and finally ended up in his house on Lexington Avenue in a bed in the middle of his living room, like Miss Havisham. And I used to go and read to him -- he was locked in, he was inside his own body --and I used to read to him, and Darren McCormick, who was his nurse, gave me the book The Diving Bell and the Butterfly as a gift. Well, some years later, my father, who was married to my mother for sixty years, and never had been sick in his life, he had prostate cancer for awhile, but they figured he was old enough that it wouldn’t grow so quickly, so they didn’t do anything about it, but when my mom died at eighty-nine and a half, he immediately got sick. And he lived another two years, but I usually took him to Mexico for Christmas with the kids, and I couldn’t take him that year, so I called Darren McCormick and asked him if he would watch my dad and write down whatever my father said. So he stayed with my father, but the day he arrived, which was December of 2003, the script came from Kathy Kennedy, so I was very familiar with the book. When my father died, he was terrified of death, and I felt like I had failed him, because I couldn’t help him through that. And I really made this movie, I think, as a self-help device. I’ve always had a problem with death, and I think that Jean-Dominique Bauby actually helped me out a lot. I couldn’t help my dad, but I thought it could help somebody else. So I really made it for my father."

"I talked to Bernard, and he said, 'You know, Jean-Do said to me, I have been reborn as someone else.' And I think at that moment, I mean, he really felt like, okay, he was a good writer, he had a good job, he was very competent, but there was something ordinary about who he was. And he had the chance to be a great artist. And I think he might have, if he had the hubris and the chutzpah to do it, he might have said, okay, take away my body and I will be conscious, and I will look into my interior life. And I think that in a sense, when he was healthy, he was quite superficial and very normal, and I think once this happened to him, he really – you know, I know this rinpoche that can actually meditate in his dreams, you know, I can’t do that, but it’s interesting if you – Necessity is the mother of invention, I mean, all of a sudden this guy was out at this vantage point that was very, very unique, and he was able to speak back from that place, and I think he reported back some things that were able to help all of us."

About Me

I am a writer on film based in NYC, whose work has appeared in Senses of Cinema, Offscreen, and other film journals. This blog is a forum for news and commentary on world cinema. Asian cinemas, especially Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and Hong Kong cinema, are a major focus. However, this site will also frequently cover other notable happenings and trends across the globe. Also, this site will serve as a chronicle of my personal exploration of cinema.